LGO tells council to pay £20k to mother of autistic children after care failings

Lambeth Council has agreed to pay almost £20,000 to a single mother of two autistic children, after a damning Local Government Ombudsman report into its failure to provide daily care for more than a year.

The mother, Ms West, had complained to the Ombudsman about the local authority’s failings in its support.

An investigation by the LGO found that Lambeth:

• “did not write care plans for the children or update its core assessments, which meant it did not provide all the daily care the children needed for a period of more than a year;
• failed to provide the respite care the complainant needed for more than 15 months after it could have been expected to do so;
• failed to deal with the complaint in a timely way; and
• failed to provide a remedy for the faults that its own processes identified.”

Delivering a finding of maladministration causing injustice, the Ombudsman, Dr Jane Martin, said: “The effect of the council’s failures was serious. The children’s mother was caused additional work in caring for her children alone by the loss of daily care and respite care to which she was entitled.”

Dr Martin also concluded that the mother had been caused “distress and justifiable outrage” by Lambeth’s failure to act even when a need for a remedy had been identified by its own complaints process.

This had been compounded by the delay in the council’s complaints process.

The payment of £19,469.88 included: £2,469.88 for the failings identified by the council; £4,000 for the effect in unnecessary additional work the mother was caused by the loss of daily care provision; £8,000 for the loss of respite provision; £2,000 for the distress; £2,000 for the justifiable outrage; and £1,000 for the time and trouble in complaining to the LGO.

In addition to recommending a payment, the Ombudsman urged Lambeth to issue an apology and write care plans for the children and carry out fresh core assessments if any change is proposed in future.

Dr Martin also told the council to review its policies and procedures, and consider any other service users similarly affected by any failures to write care plans or to update core assessments.

A Lambeth council spokesman said: “We would like to apologise to the family for what must have been a distressing period in their lives. The issues highlighted in the Ombudsman’s report are unacceptable, and something we view with utmost seriousness.

“We would like to assure the wider public that lessons have been learned from this case and where required, changes have been made. We have accepted the Ombudsman’s findings and also accepted their recommended remedy as a way of putting right what went wrong.”

The spokesman added: “We will support the family in the future in any way we can.”